A Division of Souls - A Novel of the Mendaihu Universe (27 page)

This guy. He was Shenaihu. A damn near
invulnerable Shenaihu. A nuhm’ndah Shenaihu, like those from
twenty-five years ago. Like the ones who were at the church today.
Scary strong. Relentless. Without moral. You’d want to be the hell
away from them as quickly as possible. So he, uh. Mum wasn’t able
to retreat quickly enough. He takes Mum up to...he…pushed her
through two floors and through the roof.

…

She…um…she lost consciousness quick, Den.
I'm sure she didn't suffer much.

...

Dad, well. Heh. You know him. He'd withstand
a nuclear blast if it meant saving his family. That's the kind of
guy, the kind of ARU officer he was. And he witnessed all that, and
he was fucking pissed! He takes the bastard into the Light, kid.
Can you believe it? Didn’t even think twice. Who would have known
our own father was able to Lightwalk like the highest trained
Mendaihu could? Goddess…! He took the guy there, and next thing you
know, they're both high above the city. I don't know if it was
Dad's sense of irony or sick sense of humor, but he re-emerges
above the Mirades Tower, and lets them fall. Just high enough to
kill them both.

Weird thing, Dad was never found.

Huh. Yeah, I know. Stupid freakin' ending to
a story, right? So damn stupid and pointless...but it makes sense,
you know? Now that I'm past the, uh, the soulhealing. I understand
it now. He was protecting both of us, Den. Whoever that bastard was
that killed our parents, knew them as Mendaihu. They sacrificed
themselves for us, Den. They wanted us to grow up unafraid and
unscathed. If and when we came into our Mendaihu traits, we would
experience them as they truly are: as energies of love and
compassion. If we had become involved in these Shenaihu back
then...who knows what would have happened?

Me? Well. I think I've adjusted to these
traits by now. Sheila figured me out soon after the fact. Farraway
knows. Poe? Maybe, maybe not, he’s never said anything about it. I
can never tell with him anyway, but I think he’d understand. I'm
certain those two Mendaihu we're working with know by now. I think
Nick might know, but you can never tell with him. What they don't
know is that I've been using it for some time now, even when I
don't admit to myself that I am.

Only tonight have I finally fully accepted
this truth, when I saw it in your eyes, and felt it in your hands.
I can only hope that you do better than I did, Denysia.

Heh.

Do you know why I just called you that?
That's your adopted Mendaihu name. Mum used to call you that when
she cradled you as a baby. I remember Dad calling me Karinna all
the time. It’s a reminder to let us know that we’re all in it
together. That there are other spirits out there that will keep us
anchored so we don’t lose ourselves.

So hey — just keep all this in your heart,
okay? But do me a favor. Don't let it eat at you, not like I did.
We're Mendaihu, Den. We’re too strong for that. We won't act on
revenge. Mum and Dad may be dead, but their souls live on. Remember
that, most of all. Their souls live on, eternally.

I love you, kid. I truly love you with all
that I am, and I’m always there for you.

Sleep tight. Sorry if I woke you up.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Provincial Governor’s
Council, Lehandiri Room, Mirades Tower

Considering all the recent events, not one
of the eleven main members of the Provincial Governor’s Council
dared to chastise him for his unorthodox changing of the speech.
Even Jack Priestley held his tongue. He sat two chairs away from
him at the curved council table, equally disappointed in Anton’s
actions and frustrated at his own unexpected impotence. Anton at
least acknowledged his presence here, for all the good it did.

He had deliberately waited
until everything had settled down before he began this meeting. He
had refused to do anything or make any further statements until he
knew for sure that the attacks on his city had ceased. An
unsanctioned spiritual flare-up had been made with the Mirades
Tower as its apparent main target for the second time in three
days.
Five
attacks this time. He wasn’t about to hold an in-house PGC
meeting until he knew it was safe to do so.

Now he held it out of necessity. He would
have rather talked in a closed-door meeting with his administrators
in a vidmat conference, and it probably would have been the safer
and smarter move, yet Jack had pushed him into it. Anton had no
qualms with members of the Crimson-Null Foundation…just with him.
The bugger of it all was that he couldn’t do a damn thing about it.
He shook his head in frustration, and pushed himself out of his
chair. The council lowered their voices to a few hushed whispers,
and all eyes landed on him.

“Good evening,” Anton
said. “I thank you for coming out tonight, and again I apologize
for taking up your personal time away from loved ones to be here.”
He winced, finding that introduction a bit stiff. He let out a
nervous cough, and continued. “In light of recent events, this will
be an informal meeting, though we will be recording for archiving.
We’re not here to make any concrete decisions, but to gather and
parse all information available. We need to know
what
went on in my
province these last few days, and
why
.”

Before Anton could continue, the lone
uniformed man sitting halfway down the table raised his hand
slightly, requesting attention. Lean, clean-cut and a little too
handsome, General Stephen Phillips found admirers everywhere in the
Bridgetown Province as the leader of the Sentinel Force Guard.
During these closed-door meetings, however, Anton found him
irritatingly petulant and pedantic. He was reasonably nice person
on the surface, but his confrontational attitude irritated the hell
out of everyone. Anton nodded to him with a forced half-smile,
accepting his offering and expecting a long, detailed report that
had been prepared beforehand. With a twitch of his left eye, the
General called up the file from the nearest SFG database which
would display somewhere in his field of vision, giving his eyes a
slightly glazed expression.

“Before we start,” Anton
interrupted. “I would like to once again remind you that this is
an
informal
meeting. There are no time limits. There are no formal
guidelines to be followed other than civility.” Seeing that no one
objected and he had nothing more to say, he conceded. “And...I
believe General Phillips has the floor.”

The General nodded with a determined
straight face and out of habit started to stand, only to quickly
sit back down, all in one fluid movement. “Thank you, Governor,” he
began. “I would like to start by reading a quick synopsis of
today's events according to SFG findings...”

Anton quickly distracted
himself by standing up in the middle of his introduction, much to
the General’s surprise and annoyance, and moved to the bank of
windows behind him. He could hear the man's awkward pause in speech
and quick rebound. He'd already heard the General's lengthy and
graphic report on the day's attacks twice today.
Not worth hearing this again,
he thought.
Once is too
much.

The meeting room's windows faced northwest,
towards the glow of the landing grids of the Bridgetown
TransUniversal Nullport and the gentle hills of the inner sectors.
He wished he could see Branden Hill Park, straight west and just
out of his line of sight. Nehalé Usarai had been living there as
late as yesterday, right under the noses of the Alien Relations
Unit headquarters down the street. He briefly watched the BMPD
helicopters hovering over the Data Research Library Archives up in
Glover Court, and Saint Patrick's Cathedral in McCleever District,
searchlights cutting the air. Three more swarms of helicopters
would be hovering with their own searchlights on the other side of
the Tower, in Fraserville, South City, and to his right at
Sculler’s Crossing. Violence in five different areas of the
city…and he was once again powerless to do anything about it. His
failure made the dull pain in his head return with a vengeance.

Shirai’s report had not left his thoughts,
and he refused to put them aside. Something important was going on
here in the city, something much larger than the politics and
economics that came with running a province. This was on a societal
level, a psychological and spiritual level. Most of the people here
in this meeting room had no idea what was going on, and probably
wouldn’t be able to fathom the extent of damage it would cause even
if they did. They didn’t care about spiritual balance — it wasn’t a
concrete idea. General Phillips had not mentioned the Shenaihu once
during his presentation. He had just spoken words that were on the
minds of every single person in this room, yet none dared say
them.

He swore under his breath. If anything,
there was only one person in this room who might understand. And
she wasn’t saying anything at all.

“Sir?” the General called out.

He turned and faced the soldier with a bored
lift of an eyebrow. “Yes, General?”

The soldier cleared his throat and stood up
as if to address the room. “Sir, you seem to be taking this
morning's attacks with a troubling amount of calm.”

Anton smirked. “Would you rather I lose my
sanity, Stephen?”

The General blinked, first in confusion,
then in bemusement at Anton’s deliberate avoidance of his title.
“Sir. I hardly think this an appropriate time for humor.”

“Get to the point, please.”

The man glared at him. “Without haste, sir.
The ARU Sentinel Teams have deployed security troops around various
parts of the city. They have now secured the perimeters of the five
attack points, with additional forces at other major public places,
such as data libraries, corporate buildings, and other research
facilities. The BMPD have covered the public market areas such as
the lower end of Sculler's Crossing and the various shopping
centers.”

“And?”

“Sir, I am at a loss. There is no immediate
crisis in any public area that any of us have seen. None more so
than usual, at any rate. Given that the five-point attack took
place at five public and seemingly predestined locations, we should
be expecting a threat against the Tower itself. Yet for the last
ten hours we have seen and reported nothing at all.”

Anton let out a long, patient breath.
Couldn’t they see the obvious? Or were they just avoiding it? “For
that, I have no answer, General. Perhaps they're waiting for a
Mendaihu response.”

“Governor!” Nandahya Mirades gasped. That
off the cuff statement had clearly hit a nerve with the Meraladian
councilor, which was precisely what he’d meant to do. Nandahya, the
representative for Affairs of Meraladian Society, had been waiting
with strained patience for an opening so she could join in the
conversation, and he had just given it to her. She glared at him
with dark eyes and a ferocious scowl. Her spot at the council table
was to his immediate left — a purely symbolic position to show
equality between Meraladian and human — but she so rarely took an
active part in these meetings. And she was that one person here who
truly understood what was going on out there.

“I do apologize, emha Mirades,” he said,
bowing slightly in her direction. “That was not meant as a slight,
but as a possibility.”

Nandahya pursed her lips
and frowned at him, holding back coarser words. She closed her
eyes, let out a breath, and continued.
“Sir,” she said. “I
realize that may have been a rhetorical remark, and a poor one at
that. But the chances of a response by the Mendaihu may be higher
than you think. Even more so if edha Usarai makes that response.
Right now, scores of Devotees are gathering in the Waterfront
sector, at or near the abandoned Moulding Warehouse. The reports on
the NewsComms are saying they're only performing meditations and
prayers...” she trailed off. Even she knew how pathetic she
sounded.

Anton walked to the window again, touching
the cold panes with his fingertips. Knowing full well that any
decision made during this meeting would rest on his shoulders, for
good or ill, he set about trying to put an end to this
directionless talk. Given the situation, he wanted to give these
Devotees the benefit of the doubt. After all, a circle cast of that
magnitude was not something to be taken lightly. But he also did
not want to endanger the citizens of Bridgetown in any way. Selfish
reasons be damned — the last thing he would want to see would be a
full-scale war between spiritual factions. He did not want that to
happen again.

He turned around and faced
the council again. “General Phillips, I would like to have a Spec
Force Unit parked at various points inside the Waterfront District.
Make it unobtrusive. Let the devotees know your teams are there for
everyone’s safety, just to keep the peace should anything arise.
There is to be absolutely
no
interference without my say-so. The ARU are still
trying to track down edha Usarai, so he could be anywhere — even
down at the warehouse.”

“Yes, sir.”

Nandahya frowned at him. “While I do honor
your decision for the Special Forces to be in the district purely
for security and safety, Governor, I realize I must throw my own
rhetorical question into discussion. Now, given that this display
of ritual and prayer is a peaceful gesture, I'm sure that we can
all rest easy in the notion that they will have been well
protected, if overly so. However, given the theories for the
motives behind the attacks that have already surfaced on the street
and in the media, what are the resources open to us if the same
thing happens again, perhaps on a much larger scale? Mere Spec
Force units will be far from adequate to protect the crowds.”